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Air & Space Power Journal - Spring 2006

Editor’s Note: Colonel Carey and Colonel Read circulated drafts of their article “Five Propositions Regarding Effects-Based Operations”to noted military experts. Both authors thought that ASPJ readers would be interested in seeing the comments below.

Lt Col J. P. Hunerwadel, USAF, Retired

Do not let the title of this article fool you: Col Steven Carey and Col Robyn Read have added a sterling contribution to the professional literature on effects-based operations (EBO). The opening paragraphs alone offer one of the best, most concise statements of the difference between art and science in warfare—and between fog and friction—that I have ever read. The authors are also quite right to say that the worst shortfall in EBO today lies in the “ad hocracy” (64) that has prevailed in the development of concepts and doctrine over the last decade, which until lately has inhibited the usefulness of effects-based thinking to war fighters.

Really, the title is as much a ploy to catch the reader’s eye as it is an objection based on content. That stated, I do believe that “Five Propositions” promises more than EBO can currently deliver and underestimates the degree to which existing processes and force structures are effects-based already, overstating the degree of confusion and disarray within the community of individuals who are developing effects-based concepts. Let me explain.

In several places, “Five Propositions” makes statements like “EBO provides a coherent mechanism for addressing both art and science in war” (64) (emphasis added). Proposition two states that “EBO provides a comprehensive framework for coalition operations” (67) (emphasis added). In point of fact, EBO holds considerable potential to do just these things. Simply instilling broad, effects-based principles, as their article offers, encourages creation of more specific applications that will help war fighters below the level of the joint force commander employ these principles in planning, executing, and assessing operations. However, to imply, as the article does, that EBO offers robust methodologies today contradicts one of the basic points of their article (and of mine): that EBO has lacked definitional clarity, has been misrepresented in many joint and service venues (especially by US Joint Forces Command [JFCOM], but that is another article), and has been represented in some venues as all things to all people at all times. Saying that a construct is intellectually useful and saying that it provides “a robust methodology” (as earlier versions of “Five Propositions” did and as some people in JFCOM now claim it does) are very different things. For example, the joint-estimate/military decision-making process that is being elevated to the military’s overarching planning model in the latest revision of Joint Publication 5-0, Doctrine for Planning Joint Operations, 13 April 1995, is already usefully effects-based in one very crucial respect: it forces planners to adapt iteratively to likely enemy courses of action by virtue of the way it is structured. It does not by itself, however, provide a robust effects-based methodology just because of this.

A robust methodology in the mathematical or more general scientific sense—one that will work repeatedly in many different planning environments, regardless of system stresses—would improve upon existing methods to offer effects-based insights at every step. It would do so in a manner that would allow tailoring and scaling without becoming too complicated for users at the tactical or low operational levels but would accommodate planning up to and including the integration of all instruments of national power at the strategic level. The Air Warfare Center at Nellis AFB, Nevada, and the 505th Command and Control Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida, are working now on just such methodologies, and they will undergo testing in upcoming joint experiments as well as in the field, but they have not yet been implemented.

Automated tools that support effects-based decision making have also promised much but delivered little. Some people involved in creating such tools have seemed to promise a cybernetic deus ex machina that will take all relevant data and produce “the answer” for commanders—a patent impossibility but one that appeals to the linearly and deterministically minded. Thus far, the tools community has yet to produce an automated strategy-and-decision aid that fully supports the existing estimate process, much less any EBO-related elaboration of it. All of the tools this author has examined (most of those offered, from the now-ancient Joint Force Air Component Commander Planning Tool onward) are cranky, brittle, and incapable of integration or collaboration with other tools (many of them similarly cranky) that run related processes within air and space operations centers. And we are dealing now only with the planning aspect of EBO: the problems inherent in tool integration may grow exponentially when we try to implement a truly “streaming” air tasking process, integrate collaborative tools across the entire joint force (and/or with federated or coalition analysis organizations), and incorporate assessment measures in appropriate and robust ways.

“Five Propositions” also offers more than may be deliverable in the realm of coalition operations, stating that “the United Nations (UN) has increasingly assumed roles as the arbiter of state-to-state intervention” (67) and trying to demonstrate how effects-based thinking should influence coalition operations by giving all coalition partners “a stake and a voice in the planning process” (68). First of all, the authors’ statements regarding the UN are highly questionable. The last decade’s history seems to me to show a diminishment of the UN’s role as arbiter among nations, not an increase. Its credibility has been damaged by scandal, bureaucratic inertia, and pure incompetence during numerous humanitarian crises, from Somalia in 1993; through standing mute witness to the genocide in Rwanda; through tsunami and earthquake relief that it handled poorly, save for US and Australian contributions; to current—as yet unsuccessful—attempts to stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Despite the best efforts of the current US administration to force it to become relevant and engaged regarding crucial international disputes (such as Iraq), the UN remains resolutely hostile to the US worldview and interests, and its intransigence has forced the United States into increasing reliance on unilateral action, the forming of ad hoc coalitions of the willing, and a rise in the global military presence of the “Anglosphere.”^{1 If any aspect of the UN’s current functioning is a model for the practice of EBO, no wonder some services ardently and emotionally reject it.2}

Second, it is not clear that subjecting the planning process to veto by committee in any way improves it. Committees can be fine tools if one already has a course of action in mind and is simply trying to obtain multilateral buy-in for it. By and large, however, they are a hindrance—not a help—to military operations (precisely the reason that military organizations have commanders rather than committees running them). To say that encouraging international committee-forming is one of the integral elements of -effects-based thinking is, once again, to risk seeing EBO rejected out of hand by the world’s (overwhelmingly Anglospheric) war fighters.

Fortunately, this overpromising based on internationalist wishful thinking does not reflect any part of EBO’s fundamental nature. It certainly can facilitate consideration of coalition options but does not require coalition participation. One can still employ effects-based thinking down to the tactical level solely within the realm of the military instrument of power. It should encourage consideration of all actors within the operational environment, even at the tactical level, but does not require coalition buy-in. For example, whether a platoon sergeant allows members of his or her unit to shoot into a religious shrine from which they are receiving fire may have profound consequences upon the ultimate cultural-political end state in a conflict and thus may require the attention of higher-level commanders (not to mention planners and commanders responsible for rules of engagement). At the platoon level, however, a committee’s buy-in would be worse than useless. Among other things, robustness implies useful scalability: it must work as seamlessly as possible up and down the chain and add higher-level considerations or processes where and when they are most needed. Again, we’re not there yet with an effects-based approach to coalition operations.

As mentioned earlier, “Five Propositions” also errs in underestimating the degree to which existing programs and processes are already effects-based. Proposition five states that “military forces should be specifically organized and trained to conduct EBO” (71), maintaining that joint forces failed to conduct true EBO during Operation Iraqi Freedom and other operations because they lacked a coherent conception of what EBO is and how to implement it. The authors object to tacking on effects-based principles or techniques to existing processes: “this . . . strap-on approach to -legacy planning elements ensures a bias against achieving the full measure of this concept. Additionally, it can encourage a business-as-usual attitude within the joint community, using a thin coating of EBO jargon to give it that luster of newness. Is it any wonder that many people do not see EBO as anything different?” (72)

Well, no, since in many ways EBO is no different from the way we’ve done business for quite a while, as the authors themselves point out toward the beginning of the article. Ardent advocates of a new idea typically overstate its newness and emphasize how it differs from the run of the mill. Indeed, some people in the effects-based community have done precisely what Colonel Read and Colonel Carey warn against: adding the word effects to an existing process and thus calling it effects-based. Doing so is wrong, but so is overlooking those aspects of current processes that are fundamentally effects-based. I mentioned one earlier: the war-gaming and course-of-analysis comparison steps of the current joint-estimate process force a partial effects-based approach upon planners. The entire structure is not inherently effects-based; one of its major failings is that it does not require planners to choose means to evaluate plan success—to choose assessment measures. It should explicitly include an assessment stage and should emphasize that this must start with initial planning efforts. Likewise, the existing air tasking and targeting processes do contain steps that call for assessment, making them at least partially effects-based according to the principles established in “Five Propositions.” The fact that they are not as “EBOish” as they could be, however, does not invalidate them as processes, nor does it provide a justification for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Such a desire to reinvent the wheel is another common tendency among innovators, but it inevitably creates resistance and friction. This can be a good thing if the process or thing to be replaced is fundamentally flawed and must be entirely overthrown. However, if the processes are just incomplete, it is better to subvert and co-opt them precisely by adding or changing a bit at a time, as necessary robust improvements become available.

The development of airpower theory is instructive here. Some visionaries realized something of airpower’s full potential early on, but the lack of technology limited its applicability and led to overzealous promises, which hurt airpower’s credibility and prevented it in some cases from functioning as usefully as it could have as part of the military instrument of power. Overpromising also led to open hostility on the part of some members of the surface forces who developed maneuver-warfare theory, which represents in three dimensions (two horizontal and time) what fully realized airpower theory is in four (two horizontal, the vertical, and time).3 These two communities could and should have worked together—if they had, we might today have a more robust conception of EBO with buy-in from all the services.

As it is, many of the processes and organizations within US joint forces are effects-based or operate according to EBO principles now. It should be possible to incorporate effects-based insights in other areas without fundamentally changing the way we do business. US Air Force Air Combat Command sponsors an EBO integrated process team (IPT), which includes members from all the combatant commands as well as the Air Staff; the team works with many organizations to develop a consistent and coherent basis on which to build effects-based applications. For example, it helps ensure that the tools now being built as decision aids for planning and assessment are consistent with emerging doctrine and terminology on EBO. This represents a considerable improvement over past methods of tool development. Furthermore, an assessment task force sponsored by the Air Staff Operations Directorate works closely with the EBO IPT (and has many members in common), which is developing supportable and consistent assessment methods and is monitoring tool development as well. All of them work with the Air Force Experimentation Office to ensure that experiments and war games use and evaluate the tools and techniques that are developed.

The authors of “Five Propositions” have been somewhat isolated from efforts to improve and advance effects-based thinking outside the academic realm. This unfortunate situation needs rectifying because they rightly see the biggest danger looming on the horizon: “Forcing ‘approved-solution’ doctrine into circulation before its time can only stifle the growth in thinking that comes with EBO” (66). Indeed, an “approved solution” is forming that threatens just such an end. JFCOM is working on a conception of an effects-based approach to operations that is immature and misguided in several respects. The limitations of JFCOM’s approach lie beyond the scope of this article, but in terms of overpromising, the command goes far beyond anything Colonel Carey and Colonel Read boast of. This has led to significant and understandable resistance from services and combatant commands that do not have the depth and breadth of practical experience the Air Force has in conducting EBO. Because the Air Force has the most experience, it has the best shot at getting EBO right, and because it does, the Air Force owes it to the entire joint force to promise only what EBO can deliver, to advance it intelligently as new techniques and tools become available, and to refrain from reinventing the wheel when it isn’t necessary. 

1. Novelist Neal Stephenson coined the term Anglosphere, which refers to the community of nations that share not only the English language, but also the cultural heritage of liberty under the rule of law, honoring democratic forms of government, capitalism, individualism, willing delay of gratification, and adhering to covenants and contracts regardless of clan or community ties. See “Neal Stephenson,” Wikepedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson (accessed 21 December 2005); James C. Bennett, An Anglosphere Primer, 2002, http://www.pattern.com/bennettj-anglosphereprimer.html (accessed 20 December 2005); and “Anglosphere,” Wikepedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere. In keeping with the spirit of the phrase’s author, the Anglosphere is as much a global, virtual, distributed network joined by certain cultural and political ideas as it is a description of geographic or ethnic enclaves. For instance, Hong Kong and India may be part of it, while Quebec and Eire may not.

2. Most recently, for example, see Lt Gen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC, retired, Planning for and Applying Military Force: An Examination of Terms (Washington, DC: Hicks & Associates, Inc., 2005).

3. See, for example, ibid.; and works of great minds like Brig Gen Huba Wass de Czege, USA, retired.

Lt Col J. P. Hunerwadel, USAF, retired (BS, George Mason University; MS, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), is a senior doctrine analyst in the Joint and Multinational Doctrine Directorate at Headquarters Air Force Doctrine Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He previously served as an instructor and evaluator pilot in the B-52, T-38, and T-1 aircraft, with more than 4,000 flying hours and 26 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. He also served as an instructor at the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education (CADRE) at Maxwell, where he taught campaign planning as well as operational design and helped develop planning curricula for Air Command and Staff College, Air War College, and CADRE. The principal author of Air Force Doctrine Documents 2-1.2, Strategic Attack, and 2-1.9, Targeting, the first Air Force doctrine publications to discuss effects-based operations in depth, Colonel Hunerwadel is widely recognized as one of the US military’s leading experts on the effects-based approach to operations.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University

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